October 16, 2020 Fame Is the Name of the Game A Meditation on Why So Many People Dream of Being (or Even Just Meeting) Celebrities By Alfie Kohn “The question I get asked more than any other question: ‘If you had it to do again, would you have done it?’” Trump said of running for president. “The answer is, yeah, ... Read More
Blog Posts
December 19, 2020 The Tests Are Lousy, So How Could the Scores Be Meaningful? By Alfie Kohn Way before Waze, I listened to traffic reports on my car radio whenever I had to drive to the airport. Over time I came to realize that the information they broadcast was frequently wrong: I’d be caught in a jam on a ... Read More
March 8, 2021 Dewey, Piaget, and Frosted Mini Wheats By Alfie Kohn To listen to an episode of the podcast Kohn’s Zone (entitled “Skip the Sugarcoating”) which is based on this blog post, click here. In case you are not familiar with the cereal called Shredded Wheat, it is basically hay. Many of us who are members of the ... Read More
May 3, 2021 The Progressive Teacher’s Role in the Classroom What Active Adult Involvement Does and Doesn’t Entail By Alfie Kohn According to Michael Harrington and many other scholars, a careful reading of Marx’s work makes it clear that he “regarded democracy as the essence of socialism.” Soviet-style Communism, by contrast, corrupted socialism “by equating it with a totalitarian denial ... Read More
July 14, 2021 When Racism Isn’t the Only Problem By Alfie Kohn I’ve been thinking lately about policies that are multiply flawed. Drilling for oil in the Arctic Refuge is a bad idea not only because it threatens wildlife but also because it exacerbates the climate crisis. Diverting taxpayer funds to religious schools undermines public education while simultaneously breaching the ... Read More
November 4, 2021 Indoctrination By Alfie Kohn Some years ago I gave a talk in which I outlined classroom practices that can promote caring and cooperation. When I was done, a woman stood up and informed me heatedly that she doesn’t send her child to school “to learn to be nice.” That, she said, would be “social engineering.” Besides, she ... Read More
January 11, 2022 Second Thoughts About Community and “Empathy” By Alfie Kohn We’re too quick to ascribe neutrality to things that actually aren’t neutral at all. Standardized tests, for example, don’t provide anything like an objective “snapshot” of teaching and learning. Not only are they best at measuring relatively trivial intellectual capabilities, but administering them influences what gets taught, thereby ... Read More
October 27, 2025 Seeing What Isn’t Out There A Meditation on Various Forms of Projection By Alfie Kohn We’re all familiar with the way some people attribute their own problematic traits or feelings to others. Projection, as described by Freud and his followers, was originally conceived as a defense mechanism that operated unconsciously. Think of the perpetually angry person who ... Read More
August 25, 2025 Education for What? By Alfie Kohn To talk about curriculum (what to teach) or pedagogy (how to teach) is to bump up against the question of why to teach. What is the purpose of education? And why do so few people address this topic directly? Something similar can be observed in the field of psychology. A therapist’s ... Read More